After Hezhollah’s rocket attacks, Israel carries out strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday. Around 40 rockets were fired into northern Israel in the morning a day after a senior Hamas official was killed in Beirut. Meawhile, US Secretary of state, Antony Blinken began his Middle East tour today.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said its fighter jets had attacked a number of sites run by Hezbollah in the areas of Aita al-Sha’ab, Yaron and Ramya.
Some of the military establishments were also targeted, said Israel.
The rocket attacks in the northern Israel comes a day after the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, warned that his group’s response to the killing of Hamas’s deputy chief last week would be “decided on the battlefield”. “We cannot keep silent about a violation of this seriousness, because this means that all of our people will be exposed,” said Nasrallah.
He also added that the repercussions of silence would be "far greater".
Hezbollah said the rocket attack was a "preliminary response" to the killing of Hamas's deputy chief.
Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed on 2 January in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh.
Blinken’s Middle East tour
Ahead of Blinken's visit to Israel, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the US should focus on ending the "aggression". “We... hope that he will be more focused this time on ending the aggression...the occupation of all Palestinian lands,” Haniyeh said.
US support for Israel caused unprecedented massacres and war crimes against our people”. He also said that he hopes Blinken had "learned the lessons of the last three months”.
Meanwhile, Blinken has met with the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, at the start of a week-long trip for talks on the situation in the Middle East. In a statement, Fidan said the pair had discussed the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza as well as Swedish accession to Nato.
Blinken is also set to hold talks in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. He will also visit Israel and West Bank during the tour.
According to the Hamas-run ministry, at least 122 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours.
At least 122 Palestinians have been killed and 256 injured over the past 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Overall the death toll rose to 22,722, while got 58,166 injured.
